


as long as i'm here as i am, so are you

by fiddleogold_againstyoursoul



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Bucky got sidelined real hard, Canon Compliant, M/M, Not A Fix-It, What Happens After, yeah i'm sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-09 19:29:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18644608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiddleogold_againstyoursoul/pseuds/fiddleogold_againstyoursoul
Summary: Maybe if Bucky had loved him more, loved him harder, the fear and fire and end of the world would have turned out differently. All these maybes he was still wallowing in.





	as long as i'm here as i am, so are you

**Author's Note:**

> as stated in the tags, this is not a fix-it fic OR something to bash Steggy or Chris Evans; this is part of a loosely connected series of works wherein Bucky has (mostly) unreciprocated feelings for Steve

All Bucky used to know of time travel was that time could pass awfully quickly when you weren't totally in your own head, or at least that your head in your body wasn't ageing like it should've, like the rest of the world was. He woke up one day an Asset to a HYDRA different from the one he knew, and he took that at face value, because his life was about making good with what he could get. Not that his time as the Soldier had been good. It was just something in motion, something greater than him, and it was ironic that somebody who always had trouble answering to authority found relief in cold, unfeeling directives. 

He was a sergeant before he was the Asset. An asset in his own way, but at least then he'd felt like he had agency in  _something._ At least then, the uniform had felt ennobling rather than restrictive, an honour instead of a title foisted upon him that he had no choice but to wear, a star and name that went against what he--what Steve, what all the Howling Commandos--had been fighting for. In the 21st century, things weren't so different. Sure, they had movies in colour and video games and friendly, chatty bird-men that dropped out of the sky and took him to therapy, but what good Sam and his patient, kind, never-patronising smiles did seemed insignificant when you thought,  _really_ thought about who Bucky was. Who Bucky had been. A murderer. A weapon. A mechanism for a plan that dwarved him. It broke his damn heart in two. The boy from Brooklyn, the girl-crazy, war-hungry hotshot, reduced to a gun with a mouth...and even the mouth had been muzzled. Because he remembered all that, even if in bits in pieces, even if foggy and blurry and tinged with that awful gut-twisting feeling of the repulsion that always accompanied his days as the Soldier. He remembered the doctors. The needles, Jesus, the needles. The handlers. He remembered shooting Howard Stark through the window of a car and getting back onto his motorcycle.

He remembered the bridge.

_Bucky?_

Yeah. And he remembered what came after, the words he'd snarled, the denial, default to programming, default to  _something:_ "Who the hell is Bucky?"

Some days now he still didn't know. He remembered that he wanted to ask Steve once, but there was no Steve to ask anymore. At least not his Steve. Not a Steve that would humour a question like that.  _Who the hell is Bucky?_ he might repeat, through that old-man mouth, smiling an old-man smile, so secretive in its old-man way, like _look how much more I've lived without you,_ (not that Steve would ever say that because he wasn't cruel, but still) he would say _I dunno, what the hell kind of question is that? Who stares back at you from your bathroom mirror every morning?_ and Bucky still wouldn't know how to answer that. 

Because it was him, himself, real, true, alive, and still he felt more lost every time he woke to soft sunlight coming in through the curtains and sometimes Sam's whistle through the windows--as winged Captain America, he took it upon himself to patrol the city as often and as annoyingly as he could, and to enlist Bucky right alongside him--and more disembodied, as if after the snap, after dying in Steve's arms with that one (but there were so many) name on his lips and more words he hadn't gotten the chance to say dying along with him, his particles had flown together wrong, or some of them had been left behind in those rich Wakandan fields. Sometimes he had half a mind to go back just to find the rest of himself. But that wasn't right either. Because he'd felt discombobo--discomb-- _diced up and shot to shit_ since he woke up, and not from cryo, no, since Steve woke him up and slapped some sense into him in this new century. He was himself but he wasn't. He was Bucky Barnes but he  _wasn't,_ could never be, because who the fuck was Bucky Barnes without a girl on his arms, song on his lips, Steve at the edges of his sight, close enough to grab in case something went colossally wrong? Who the fuck was Bucky Barnes without Captain Rogers?

(what would Steve say to that? what was there to say?)

These were selfish questions, and so he never voiced them. Not in therapy with Sam or over drinks with Wanda, and by God if he didn't miss Nat, with whom the words came so stunningly simple and she seemed to understand instantly. He was in no position to make demands. He was in no position to ask for things he couldn't have in this moment or the next, or even the one before it. Steve was never his. Not now, not then, not ever. 

Time travel wasn't his forte, but Steve was. He knew the look in those baby blues on the day after they dusted Thanos. For a desperate, terrible moment his breath caught in his throat and a desperate, terrible thought seized him: to be selfish. For once in his life, to weigh self-interest over Steve's interest. But how could he? When Steve's mind was made up one century ago? No. He was stronger than this. Steve suited up, and Bucky smiled at him because Bucky was _happy_ for him. He should've been He had the words on his lips (so many so many) but they stubbornly refused to come, a deluge behind tight floodgates. Steve hugged him. It was brief. Like they were friends from work instead of (dare he say soulmates?) people who had lived two whole incomplete separate lives together. A century's worth of memories, and Steve wanted more, or rather wanted some of his own. Bucky felt like he'd been violently slugged in the gut. "I love you," he said, but he didn't, really. Banner was standing there. Sam was standing there. Steve was looking into his eyes, and they understood each other then more than they ever had, but Bucky still felt so alone. "I love you, Steven Grant Rogers," but he didn't. He couldn't. He wasn't brave enough. Not now, not then, not ever. He swore as a teenager in ill-fitting slacks that he'd take his love for Stevie to the grave, and it seemed he'd get to keep that one promise after all. Sometimes, people didn't get happy endings. Not even if you waited till the very end of the line. Not even if you waited a hundred years, and then some. Not even if you died for a little bit, or at least blinked out of existence for a hot minute, because the only reward the world presented survivors was the chance for more life. Not a life you wanted, or a life you needed, or even the guarantee of a life at all.

Steve said, "I wanted to try some of that life Tony was always telling me to get," and Bucky's heart broke.

Because they could've had that life. In this century...well, had it been too much to hope? That in this brave new world, they could've  _lived_ together? That maybe, just maybe, Steve could let bygones be bygones and take their new future in stride. There were still nights he laid awake thinking about it. What might've happened if his mouth had unhinged then, let flow the words _I love you, I've always loved you, I can't be your best past but I'll be your best present and future, I promise._ Maybe Steve would've. Maybe he would've--

_Naw, Buck. You know better than that._

The shield Sam flew 'round with now used to fit on the arm of a golden boy he watched grow. A squirt turned into a soldier turned into a hero shot down too soon, and then someone from history, and then someone in the present, fighting with  _and for_ him, and now someone in the past again. The old man in the retirement home on the street Sarah Rogers used to fill with the sweet scent of her baking, he used to be Bucky's whole world. Now the world had shifted. The laws of time and space had bended, somehow, to accommodate the kind of love that transcended it. Someone on the radio crooned  _All the fear and the fire and the end of the world happens each time a boy falls in love with a girl,_ and Bucky turned the damn thing off. He was thinking of a shared bed and a bony back he'd trace with his eyes, a boy jumping on a grenade, a man breaking into a HYDRA base, a soldier giving up his shield to protect him. Maybe if Bucky had loved him more, loved him harder, the fear and fire and end of the world would have turned out differently. All these maybes he was still wallowing in.

"Can I ask you something, man?" Sam said one day. Bucky looked up and thought, with a horrifying certainty, _he knows._ As casually as he could, he shrugged. "If you had one of Pym's capsules right now, would you go back? Live your life back then, there?" 

He had no fucking idea.

It made Bucky want to scream with laughter, but it also made him want to lock himself into another cryo chamber and sleep for another hundred years, where with his luck the golden boy from his past would still be around to haunt him. The question didn't faze him, because he'd thought about it. It was one of those things you couldn't not think about, now that your hands were free and your brain was unburdened by worldly worries like whether or not a space invasion would doom humanity the next morning. Of  _course_ he'd thought about it. How easy it would be to snap himself back home to Brooklyn, 1940s, knock on their door (yeah,  _theirs,_ because they had a life once) and live. But he wouldn't be able to live with himself, was the thing. Not now, not then, not ever. If he kept Steve Rogers from the worst of the fire the fire would never stop burning. And who was to say Steve wanted that, then, now, ever? Steve, who'd had eyes for Margaret Carter since he first saw her. Steve, who'd waxed poetic about her hair, the look in her eyes when she disintegrated him with a word. Steve, who carried her picture with him like a ward against evil. Maybe the evil was Bucky and what he represented. The end of the line. And even if he chose the day Steve left for another life, right after Thanos, what's to say it wouldn't go the same way? Words that had been hidden for years tended to stay that way. 

"No," he said.

"Really? No hesitation at all?"

"Life's good here," he said. He used to think Steve would've said the same thing.

So he carried on, carried on, carried on. Picked himself up day by day. Downloaded Grindr and deleted it after the third unsolicited dick pic. Went to therapy and drank and sparred with baddies. On some days Sam was even gracious enough to let him wield that star-spangled shield, that great glorious gift from someone he loved once (another life altogether) and thought about always, and that was enough for Bucky Barnes, still trying to make sense of his place in a world that insisted he remain on the sidelines. The sidelines were good enough for him. He was a sniper; he shot from above, far away from the action, from the noise, from the living.

_End of the line, Steve. Till the very fuckin' end._

With or without Steve, who was never his and now never would be.


End file.
